In the financial banking industry, and in general, it is important that counterfeit currency bills are discovered quickly and accurately. Currently, numerous counterfeit detection devices exist that attempt to detect counterfeit bills. Some of these devices include comparing the light, visible, infrared, and/or ultraviolet, emitted from tested bills to light emitted from known genuine bills. Other security features in genuine bills include watermarks, magnetic printing, and security threads. These devices, however, do not catch all counterfeit bills. Undetected counterfeit bills are sometimes accepted for deposit into a depositor's financial account (i.e., a savings and/or checking account), often at the loss to the bank. For example, if a counterfeit bill passes through the device undetected and is later discovered to be counterfeit, there is no way to discover who deposited, gave, or otherwise disposed of the counterfeit bill. When a counterfeit bill is passed onto a bank or a company, the entity discovering that the currency bill is a counterfeit bears the loss. Thus, a bank using any of these devices would still be unable to charge customers for counterfeit currency bills once it is discovered that the bill is counterfeit.
Another drawback of some current counterfeit detection devices is speed. In some counterfeit detection devices, currency bills must be fed into the devices one by one, which requires manual operation and is quite slow. If it is the customer (a depositor at a bank or a consumer at a retail location) who must feed the bills, this may create customer dissatisfaction with the entity requiring such methods. Alternatively, if it is the entity accepting the bills that manually feeds the bills through the devices, then they must pay someone to feed the bills into the device. Also, another drawback is that customers must wait in longer lines to have their deposits processed because each deposit takes longer to process.
Therefore, there is a need for a device that provides for an improved method of tracking the movement of currency bills that may be used by entities that deal with a high volume of currency bills (such as financial institutions, retail stores, casinos). There is also a need to quickly process a deposit, so time spent in line or feeding the machine is minimized.
In addition to losses experienced by banks due to counterfeit currency bills, banks often experience losses due to forged or counterfeit checks. Currently, when a check comes into a bank for payment, the customer may provisionally be given credit for the check. The check is then routed through the Federal Reserve banking system to the bank that the check is drawn against. Once the payee bank receives the check, the check is taken to a processing center where the check is authenticated. The checking account number and check number will be checked for validity as well as to see if any stop payments have been placed on the check. Check amounts may be verified against set limits and signatures may be verified against signature cards. If a check is deemed to be a forgery or as one that should not be paid, the payee bank returns the check to the depositing bank, which will then debit the account to which the check was deposited.
There are, however, problems with the current system. First, it takes time to do all the processing, and the Federal Reserve Bank has imposed time limits as to how long a bank has to return a check. If the check is not discovered to be fraudulent until after the deadline has passed, one of the banks will bear the cost of the amount of the check. Also, because of these deadlines, some banks may only have time to verify signatures on high dollar amount checks, thus bearing the risk of low dollar amount checks. This leaves the banks open to risk on numerous low dollar amount checks. Sometimes, the customer may be overdrawn or have closed the account by the time the depositing bank returns the check, which also leaves the bank open to the possibility of bearing the loss.
Many banks allow people to cash checks drawn on that particular bank. In this case, there is no way for the teller to know prior to disbursing the money whether the check is forged or if it should not be paid for another reason. A teller may verify the signatures and check for stop payments (when a customer indicates to the bank not to pay a certain check number) on checks drawn on that bank. This is insufficient in many instances and may also be very time consuming, depending on how the signatures for the account are stored and how many the teller must look through.
Also, many banks allow their customers to cash checks that are drawn on other banks. This also carries risk for the bank, since the check may be returned and the account may have insufficient funds or the account may be closed. Another problem is that the Federal Reserve requires that a certain amount ($100) of the check become available after a certain time period, which may be before the check has been verified by the payee bank. This also opens the bank to certain risks.
Thus, there is a need for a device that can be used by a teller or a customer that can quickly verify whether a check should be paid.